Canadian Liza Reid, who grew up on a hobby farm in the Ottawa Valley, is now Iceland’s first lady. Last June, in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal, Reid’s husband, Guoni Thorlacius Jóhannesson—a history professor who had never held political office—was elected president.By BRIAN D. JOHNSON

The crucial moment in Ed Burtynsky’s life as a photographer probably occurred half a century ago, when he was 11. His father, an autoworker from St. Catharines, Ont., with an artistic bent, acquired a darkroom. But it wasn’t the darkroom itself that was the making of one of the most celebrated Canadian photographers ever, now the subject of his first retrospective, the collection Essential Elements.By BRIAN BETHUNE

Anyone looking for members of Justin Trudeau’s cabinet who embody his vision of Canadian society has no shortage of likely candidates. Following him down that sunlit lane to Rideau Hall to be sworn in last fall, they were a political marketer’s dream: half of them younger than 50, precisely as many women as men, visible-minority ministers striding into several key portfolios.By JOHN GEDDES

Looking hard at the workload of Justin Trudeau’s government can be like peering into a dense thicket of promises. He made about 200 of them in last fall’s Liberal election platform. Some he’s kept and a few he’s broken, but of course most of those policy pledges remain, after only about a year in power, works in progress.By JOHN GEDDES

IT WOULD SEEM to be courting controversy to choose from the half million or so books published in this country in the past 25 years a list of the top 25. This week the Literary Review of Canada (LRC) marks its 25th anniversary by doing just that.

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